With all the extreme winter weather we are experiencing (the Washington DC area is expecting sleet and rain today, better than snow), I thought I’d repost a blog I did in 2007 about the last frost fair held on the Thames for a few days in February, 1814.

Here it is:

From about the mid 14th century to the early 19th century (the little ice age), the Thames sometimes froze solid in the winter and fairs were held on its ice. The climate was not the only reason the river turned to ice. The Thames was shallower then and the old London Bridge was built in a manner that slowed the flow of water and fostered freezing.

The first recorded frost fair was held in 1608, but the one I wanted to know about was the frost fair of 1814, The Last Frost Fair.

Joy Freeman wrote one of my favorite old Regencies titled The Last Frost Fair, which is where I first heard of the event. It seemed perfect to use in my new story and I knew just where to look for more information–The Annual Register of 1814

I have all the Annual Registers from 1810 to 1820. The Annual Registers are a little like almanacs with all the parliamentary issues, births, deaths, marriages of important people, poetry, and the most interesting news stories from the year. The Annual Register for 1814 is on google books so you can read it for yourself. The account of the fair begins on page 11 of the Chronicles, beginning on February 1 and ending February 7.
Another book with a good description of the Frost Fair is John Ashton’s Social England under the Regency, also on googlebooks.

Ashton describes the frolickers playing skittles, drinking in tents “with females,” dancing reels, more sedate coffee-drinking, and gaming booths. Souvenir cards were printed on printing presses set up on the ice. The Annual Register said the carousing went on until the ice began to break up and then people went scrambling to safety. There was some loss of life and there never again was a freezing of the river sufficient to hold a frost fair.

Have you read any books that show the Last Frost Fair?
Did you read Joy Freeman’s book and what did you think of it?
What kind of extreme weather have you been having?

I’m about to start writing a new book, so this is a good time to remind myself of what qualities I need in a hero. Years ago in my pre-blogging days, I wrote an article about romantic heroes. I looked it over and thought to share it with you.

Here are, in my view, 10 qualities essential in a romantic hero, as I wrote them over ten years ago.

1. Be flawed. Surprisingly, women don’t want the heroes of romance novels to be perfect. Perfect is boring. After all, if the hero has no flaws, what can the heroine offer him? Romantic heroes are often arrogant, short-tempered, and tough. They are complex and full of paradox. The romance reader wants the hero to overcome his faults, grow emotionally, and rise to grander heights because of his relationship with the heroine. Love enriches him and makes him into a better person.

2. Be self-assured. No, this does not contradict tip number one. The romantic hero knows himself well. He knows his strengths and weaknesses and accepts himself as he is. He has come to terms with who he is and, as a result, has confidence and surety of purpose. The heroine is attracted to his confidence, though her challenge that he become a better person always shakes him up. The hero is less sure of himself in her presence. She upsets his equilibrium.

3. Be tough. The romantic hero handles adversity, tolerates pain. He does the difficult jobs, the ones that need doing, that no one else wants to do. Romantic heroes are often special military men, like Navy Seals, or policemen, or rescue workers risking their lives for others. The worlds they inhabit are often bleak and depressing, as well as dangerous. The romantic hero is often emotionally (and physically) wounded, and the heroine’s love is what he needs to heal.

4. Be controlled. Though tough and often foul-tempered, the romantic hero nonetheless exhibits remarkable self-control. He shoulders his burdens without complaint and nevers dumps those burdens on others. He is too self-disciplined to discharge his emotions onto others. The heroine, then, helps him loosen up enough to risk sharing some of his burdens with her.

5. Be trustworthy. The romantic hero is a man of his word. If he says he will do something, he will do it. The heroine can count on him; especially, she can entrust her own vulnerability to him and know that he will not betray her. The plots of romantic novels sometimes include elements where the hero seems untrustworthy and might appear to betray the heroine; however, the reader always knows he will reveal himself to be unwaveringly true to her.

6. Be ethical. The hero’s strong sense of ethics is closely related to his trustworthiness. The romantic hero knows what is right and what is wrong. He stands by his beliefs even in the face of his own annihilation; indeed, even if he fears that, in doing so, he will lose the heroine’s love. The hero is not afraid to stand alone for what is important to him. He plays by the rules, though sometimes the rules are of his own making. He does not prey upon the less fortunate, but saves his strength to fight injustice.

7. Value equality. The romantic hero accepts his heroine as his equal, although it sometimes takes the whole book for him to learn to do so. He becomes less fixated on having his own way and learns to consider the heroine’s needs, wishes, and goals as equally important as his own. Rather than bully and dominate, he seeks to achieve an equitable balance between himself and the heroine, one in which they both are winners. He might even learn to cook.

8. Be physically fit. In romance novels, the hero’s fitness often reaches idealized perfection, but the important point is he values his body and his health. He may stretch his physical abilities to the limit and beyond, but he would never neglect himself physically or abuse his good health. At least, not once he meets the heroine.

9. Be sexually generous. Sometimes the romantic hero begins the book focused on superficial sexual relationships and his own pleasure. His relationship with the heroine, however, travels beyond the sexual. Lovemaking is one area where the hero can show the heroine his love. In his lovemaking, he gives as much or more than he takes. It is essential to him to please the heroine, to show her physically that he loves her. To his wonderment, the pleasure he receives from their lovemaking is intensified by his generosity.

10. Finally, be sure to have dark-as-night hair with a habit of falling waywardly across your forehead. The romantic heroine will ache to gently comb the unruly hair back into place with her fingers.

Actually, is it not really essential a hero have dark, touchable hair. Romance heroes come in all shapes, colors, and sizes. It is essential, though, that the romantic hero act like a hero.

What do you think? Did I miss anything?

The Riskies welcome Sandra Schwab, who’s visiting today!

Many of the real-life contemporaries of our Regency or Victorian heroes and heroines were prolific letter writers. For example, when the British Academy-Pilgrim edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens was completed in 2002, the series had reached twelve (rather fat!) volumes, and supplements with newly discovered letters continued to be published until the summer of 2013. Since nineteenth-century people could not yet share funny pictures of cats online, they used letters to maintain and strengthen relationships with family, friends, and acquaintances. “When [Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra] were apart,” Deirdre Le Faye explains in the preface to Jane Austen’s Letters,

“they wrote to each other about every three or four days – another letter began as soon as the previous one had been posted. There is always a first letter from Jane telling Cassandra of the journey from home to the destination; then a series of letters talking about daily events at the other place; and one or more letters planning the journey home. If Cassandra is the traveller, then the first letter is from Jane hoping she had a good journey; the bulk of the sequence is Jane telling Cassandra how life progresses at home; and the last one or two are Jane’s anticipation of her sister’s speedy and comfortable return trip.”

It had been the introduction of turnpike roads and the improved methods of road-making developed by Telford in the late 1700s that had made it possible to replace mounted post boys with mail coaches. In subsequent years, the mail system in Great Britain became extremely efficient and very fast: at eight o’ clock each evening, the post bags were brought from the General Post Office in Lombard Street to the various coaching inns (typically with underground stables) in London from where the mail coaches would start on their all-night journeys. While sixty or seventy years before, letters between London and Edinburgh were only dispatched once a week and, by stage coach, the journey between London and Edinburgh took between twelve to sixteen days (if the weather did not suddenly turn to the worse!), the Regency mail coach only needed about 58 hours to reach Edinburgh.

Within London, letters were delivered by the Two-Penny Post. The Picture of London for 1805 includes the following information about this service (“country” refers to specific places in Kent, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Essex, Middlesex):

Six deliveries per day! Can you imagine?  Of course, I had to put this interesting bit of research into one of my books. And thus, in SPRINGTIME PLEASURES Charlie, my very tall, bespectacled heroine, makes plenty of use of the Two-Penny Post and exchanges many letters with her friend Emma-Lee, who is ever ready to help Charlie navigate the pitfalls of polite society:

Thank you for your message, dear Charlie. I have only a moment before the post goes out so please excuse the shortness of this note.—I should hope your first Ball was as splendid as you ever wished for & I also hope that you did not Damage the two disparaging gentlemen. This is NOT DONE in London and w’d cause the most frightful Scandal! (Even if they deserved it.)—I am most curious to hear more about your new acquaintance. I c’d not find out about any rules about Invitations to Drives around the Park, but I w’d deem it best that you w’d not mention things like Removing Bloodstains from Delicate Fabrics, the Correct Way of Gutting Fish, or the Incident on our way south. You must remember that Lady Isabella is a Delicately Reared Young Lady!
Yours very affectionally, E.-L. Brockwin

P.S. I understand that it is Not Done in Polite Society to adress the groom on the box seat, except for giving him directions. So you better not ask him about the horses!

Sandra Schwab started writing her first novel when she was seven years old. Twenty-odd years later, telling stories is still her greatest passion, even though by now she has exchanged her old fountain pen (covered with pink hearts) for a computer keyboard (black, no hearts). She lives near Frankfurt on the Main, Germany, with a sketchbook, a sewing machine, and altogether too many books.

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